USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Holyoke > Holyoke old and new : a chronological history together with an account of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the incorporation of Holyoke, Massachusetts as a city : 1873-1923 > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
town lasted but twenty years plus three, before our incorporation as a City. Pathmaking through the lurking forest is not our story ; landing on a stern and rockbound shore is not our tale. Our pioneers used logs for a dam, not for cabins.
The leaders whom we praise were men of ideal aims, business-like methods, sportsmanlike principle, exercising their daring and their cunning in a manu- facturing age, an age of forceful, highly developed machinery, an age of high stakes and high winnings or losings.
HOLYOKEKROLD and NEW FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
1873 1923
OUR THEME IS MODERN
Our brave men are moderns. Though but one of the grand old oaks, John S. McElwain,-ninety- five years old on March 17, 1923,-who braved the storms of our early years, giants in industrial development,-is standing still, yet we are in a gen- eral way, very much part of their years and their experiences. No ancient fame rocks us to dreams ; no ancient tradition binds us. Holyoke is fresh woven on the loom of time. Our streets are not perpetuated cowpaths. Our City was laid out after time and experience had become generous with wisdom. Even the date which we celebrate was not born until the surrender of Appomatox was a sturdy lad of eight. The Spanish American War is our half-way house. Sprinting has done much to overcome so late a start. We began our life as a separate community, at a time when many New England cities and towns had already enjoyed one hundred, two hundred or often still many more years of corporate life, years which had given time for sturdy rootage.
"A CITIZEN OF NO MEAN CITY"
In all literature, no phrase containing the word "city" is more famous than the boast of St. Paul, declaring that he is "a citizen of no mean city." His pride is closely related to our pride. His city, Tar- sus, had its river Cyndus. His river Cyndus broke through a cleft in the Taurus mountains. His city Tarsus, was a rich and influential business center. In a word the phrase "citizen of no mean city" is born of a busy, industrial city, with a powerful river, and with noble mountains as a background. People came from afar bringing their glory and pride into this city of St. Paul's affection. It was most cosmo- politan. How readily then, does his phrase of love come to our lips.
A CITY TALE
Dr. Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Dickens, Thack- eray, are suggestive of our modern fondness for cities as places of residence. Charles Lamb said, of Lon- don, "I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fullness of joy at so much life." It is a shoddy phrase, that phrase which prates "God made the country, and man made the town." It is God Him-
self who makes the city the most inevitable institution of our modern community life. The great problems of democracy and of religion must be solved in our cities. It is of profound meaning that already Hol- yoke has been a city, more than twice as long as she was a town. More than two-thirds of our corporate life has been spent as a city with clear headed plan- ning from the start for a modern and large industrial city. We were planned to be a city. Here no other dream was ever cherished than of building a busy industrial city.
FOUNDATIONS THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN
Fifty toiling years have given us that industrial civic self-respect, that industrial civic pride, that belief in industrial civic righteousness, which are granite foundations for the yet nobler Holyoke which another generation will celebrate fifty years from now. Holyoke offers many worthy suggestions as to what the ideal industrial city of the future shall be. Were all our streets noble parks, were all our buildings palaces, Holyoke would not grip our love as it does today ; unless our civic ancestors had been as they were, men of faith,-industrial, civic, relig- ious. To an extraordinary extent Holyoke has been a church-going city. To an extraordinary extent Holyoke has practiced the spirit of true democracy. Our industrial leaders have been mostly warp of our warp, woof of our woof, sharing the church, fratern- al and other social life of the community, without "fuss or feathers."
EDITOR GRIFFIN'S TRIBUTE
Mr. Solomon Griffin in his recent book "People and Politics" speaks of Holyoke in her beginnings as a city, and this is his important testimony. “It was good for the soul to take note of the heads of important manufacturing interests, who did not take the afternoon trains for homes in Springfield. These men lived in the "Paper City", shared in its prob- lems, and bent their backs to the task of solving them. They sacrificed much to make Holyoke a good place in which to live and do business, and the results achieved are to be measured by the difficulties over- come. That which was accomplished by these pio- neers, has been an incentive to those who came after them. In few cities are the agencies for community
HOLYOKE SÅOLD and NEW
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
1873 1925
service better organized and sustained." These kindly words are true as they are welcome.
THE HOLYOKE WATER POWER COMPANY
The local leadership of this corporation is a cause for profound satisfaction, and a wiser attitude toward the public paves the way to a fairer appreciation of the really invaluable services of this concern.
During the past fifty years this Company has spent in laying out streets, in grading, and in building bridges, about $500,000. Its hydraulic extensions, including the new dam, cost $881,401. When elec- tric extensions now contracted for are completed the Company will have spent for them $1,355,417. Nine thousand horse power were generated in 1873, while the hydraulic power now amounts to 35,000 horse power.
During the past few years, the Company has sold for mill sites, business blocks, and residential pur- poses thirty-eight parcels of land containing 1,465,085 square feet, and it owns some 17,500,000 square feet less than in 1873. Steps have been taken which will eventually lead to the reclaiming for factory sites of all of the land above the dam between the so-called "Island" and the Boston & Maine Railroad.
In addition to furnishing water power to the mills of the city, the company has since 1906 generated electric power from water that would otherwise have been wasted over the dam or from its canals.
The demand of the mills of the City of Holyoke for water to be used as power in turning the wheels of industry is the equivalent of a constant flow of 18 inches in depth over the great dam.
If all the rain and snow which falls on the entire area of the City of Holyoke for one year could be put into the canals it would last only five days. Ash- ley Pond, one of the sources of domestic sup- ply for the City of Holyoke, would be emptied in four hours.
During the past fifty years the Holyoke Water Power Company has given to local charitable, educa- tional and religious organizations 179,767 square feet of land.
Our invaluable playgrounds owe much to a gen- erous attitude on the part of the Company. The
splendid dam, still called "new" although built near- ly a quarter-century ago brought national fame to Holyoke.
Emphasis on the word "power" in its name sug- gests the present movement to develop the most pow- er that can be economically procured and at the same time to dispose of its real estate as rapidly as possible.
INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS
Since 1873 a large majority of our important cor- porations have come into being. William Skinner and Sons, and the Farr Alpaca Company are titles whose vast meaning to Holyoke could not be summed up in less than many pages. Again it must ever be held in mind that the oldest companies here, such as the Whiting and Parsons Paper Companies, the Ger- mania Mills, the Springfield Blanket Co., the Holyoke Machine Company, the American Thread Co.'s mills and the Prentiss Wire Mills, have many of them made gigantic strides through the decades, equiva- lent to the coming of many new mills. Large corporations belonging in their origin to this half century are the Deane Works, Chemical, Valley, Franklin, Crocker-McElwain, and Taylor-Logan paper mills and what are now the Divisions of the American Writing Paper Co .; also the Amer- ican Pad and Paper Company, the American Tissue Mills, the Cowan Truck Company, the Eureka Blank Book Company, the Holyoke Bar Company, the Hol- yoke Belting Company, the Holyoke Valve & Hydrant Company, the Holyoke Silk Hosiery, the Baker- Vawter Company, the National Blank Book Company, the New York-New England Company, the Perfect Safety Paper Company, the Smith Tablet Company, the White & Wyckoff Manufacturing Company, Whit- ing and Cook, the Whitmore Manufacturing Com- pany and the Hampden Glazed Paper & Card Com- pany. Moreover it should be stated with the utmost emphasis that the industrial expansion of the past ten years easily holds its own with that of any other decade of the five included in our thought.
THE HOLYOKE AND WESTFIELD RAILROAD
While it is true that the Holyoke and Westfield Railroad was opened in 1871, still I must refer to it here as illustrative of the tradition of progress, of
HOLYOKE BOLD and NEW FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
1873 1923
initiative, of accomplishment handed over by Holyoke the town, to Holyoke the city. Even today thousands of residents when told that we own a really important railroad exclaim, "Well, I didn't know that." It is worth careful note that this municipal railroad was built, as the municipal lighting plant was founded, both of them in answer to a pressing need if Holyoke was to move forward. A community that could build a railroad of its own, in the days of its youth, as a matter of course built as its City Hall a tremendous building and tremendously costly for an infant city. It never dawned upon the giant of those days that IIolyoke could become anything else than a big, wealthy industrial city, therefore a $450,000 City Hall was not deemed an impossible achievement.
THE WATER SUPPLY
On August 6, 1873, water from Ashley and Wright's Ponds was let into the mains. Never again was Holyoke to drink river water. The Whiting Street, Fomer, High Service, and White reservoirs added to the original ponds make available, when the possibilities of Manhan Brook are fully developed, wat- er amply sufficient for a city of 110,000 people. Water in almost overwhelming abundance, of purity above unfavorable criticism, provided at the lowest rate in New England by a department, which itself pays taxes to the City, is a monument to civic righteousness coupled with civic intelligence. Our water-works represent an investment of $2,000,000. Our water sheds and reservoirs cover a territory of seven and a half square miles, while the area of the city is but twenty-three square miles.
THE MUNICIPAL LIGHTING PLANT
Beyond question our municipal lighting plant, stands beside our railroad and our water works as an example of unique municipal success. It is justly termed the most remarkable municipal lighting plant in New England. It has meant much to decent liv- ing, that transportation, water, light and power have been made abundant by the co-operative effort of our whole body of citizens. Health and prosperity cer- tainly have been favored by our noble municipal in- vestments. They must not be carelessly accepted as matters of course. They are most unusual and in some ways absolutely unique. A glory of this semi-
centennial year shines from the harmony now existing between both companies which manufacture electricity on a large scale. "Come now and let us reason to- gether" is a principle the practice of which has meant much toward Holyoke's progress. The municipal lighting plant represents an outlay of $2,500,000. Holyoke rejoices not only in the lowest electric light- ing rate in Massachusetts, -. 06 per kilowatt hour, but also in service of the highest order. The "free service" department is highly popular. Although the lighting of the city to-day is as sunlight to moon- light as compared with conditions existing twenty years ago, yet the cost to the city is but little more. This department handled a business of $1,164,000 dur- ing its last fiscal year, and in general holds a very high reputation for business efficiency in spite of the pressure for positions, always exerted on any muni- cipally owned business. For thoughtful people, ma- terial power, water, and light are transparencies through which shine the noblest spiritual truths that man can grasp. Here the symbols are so compelling, that the spiritual realities, which they symbolize are ever imminent to earnest souls.
OUR SUBURBS
With the beginnings in the seventies of our res- ervoir system, the Highlands began to be more thickly settled. The eighties brought the establishment of Oakdale and Elmwood, building in the later suburb being encouraged by the extension in 1887 of Maple street, across the dingle. Under the masterly guid- ance of William Loomis, the Holyoke Street Rail- road made available great acres of land for homes, and it also made a number of other communities, for most purposes, suburbs of Holyoke, and accustomed them to regard Holyoke as a center. The great plant of the Holyoke Street Railroad is modern to the last degree. When our statistics of population tempt us to be discouraged as to the City's growth, we need to remember that the town of Holyoke was established at so late a date, that many choice sections naturally belonging to us were gathered into other legal affil- iations before there was any organized community here to claim sections that were by all natural grounds, a part of our territory. Let other industrial cities which gloat over their apparent statistical
HOLYOKE BAOLD and NEW
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
1873 1923
supremacy bear in mind the great territory adjoining our City, and filled with people belonging to us by every affiliation of business, of fraternal and other social life, ecclesiastical life as well. We have Emer- son's warning against over confidence in statistics still as we take account of stock at the close of our first fifty year period, we must wish that those that are of us by all of their interests, some day by statute may be included within this sheepfold. In 1900 we began making our legal lines more nearly co-existent with our natural lines. Smith's Ferry was annexcd at a cost to us of $55,000. The era of the building of great apartment blocks started about 1900 and last- ed until war costs made the cost of such building prohibitive. Speculation in these properties has so raised rents that the movement for building homes in the suburbs has flowed much more swiftly since 1914.
MT. HOLYOKE COLLEGE
As we speak of that which is not ours and yet which is ours, thought turns naturally to Mt. Holyoke College. Four of our prominent citizens are trustees there, and one of them, Joseph A. Skinner, has rend- ered simply invaluable services as chairman of the board of trustees at a time when the College has been making tremendous financial effort for endowment and for buildings. Since Holyoke has been a city, Holyoke people have contributed to the College at least $600,000. A most beautiful recitation hall; and the noble organ in Mary Lyon Chapel are both of them suggestions of Holyoke's liberality to the great College, standing a few miles beyond our borders.
RELIGIOUS AND PHILANTHROPIC INSTITUTIONS
With the single exception of St. Jerome's Church, all of the church buildings now in use in this City belong to the city rather than to the town era. The increase in the value of ecclesiastical property in the last score of years is really startling. A fair value of local church property (aside from philanthropic and educational institutions) would appear to be around $3,000,000. When Holyoke holds its tercen- tenary the Skinner Memorial Chapel will be a shrine of holy associations upon which our remote descen- dants will gaze with loving awe.
All of our hospitals, municipal and otherwise, are the product of our life since 1873. The non-muni- cipal ones, together with the institutions at Bright- side, represent a valuation beyond the $1,000,000 mark. The substantial loyalty of our leaders is hint- ed at when we note that Frank B. Towne who was clerk of the City Hospital when it was started over thirty years ago, is to-day its active president. A single family has given to this institution some $250,000.
The Associated Charities, the District Nurse As- sociation, the Milk Station and the Community Chest organization all emphasize the intelligence and co- operative spirit which characterizes our city. One man, William Whiting, in his great strength, built our City a theatre which for many years made available the most conspicuous dramatic talent of the world. This same man built for us a hotel. Fire destroyed that hotel but the "Nonotuck," a rallying place for scores of worth while causes, has arisen through a display on the part of many citizens of the spirit which actuated William Whiting.
A GENEROUS PEOPLE
We are proud to speak of our splendid public library, located in an inevitable setting, proudest of all to realize that this building which cost $100,000 over a score of years ago is the gift of several hun- dred people. Its present president, William F. Whit- ing, is the son of its first president, who gave forty years of service. One of the most noteworthy collec- tions of musical instruments in America is housed in a costly museum, privately owned but visited con- stantly by those that can appreciate its treasures. The generosity of Holyoke people as a whole, rich and poor alike has long been a by-word far and wide through the world. A single family supports in striken and hate ravaged Turkey, an expression of brotherhood that is magnificent.
OUR RANK AND FILE
We have been fortunate in our rank and file. For years comment has been made upon the high average quality of our industrial workers. In September 1919 the American Writing Paper Company publish- ed a statement in regard to its "Old Guard". At that time there were 509 employees who had served the company for continuous periods of from twenty
HOLYOKEKAOLD and NEW FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
1873 1923
to fifty years or more. Seven had been with the company over fifty years, thirty-eight for from forty to fifty years, one hundred and seventy-three from thirty to forty years, and two hundred and ninety- one from twenty to thirty years. "As never before in history the destiny of the city is in the hands of the average citizen."
A Greek philosopher of the first century urged upon the citizens of the rich and powerful city of Smyrna,-"Rest your self-esteem more in character, than in the beauty of your city. It is a greater charm to wear a crown of men than a crown of porti- coes, and pictures, and gold." The Ephebic oath of ancient Athens rings in our ears to-day. "We will never bring disgrace to this our city by any act of dishonesty or cowardice, nor ever desert our suffer- ing comrades in the ranks. We will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the city .- We will revere and obey the laws .- We will strive unceasingly to quicken the public sense of civic duty; that thus in all these ways that we may transmit the city not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us."
Finally taken in the large is it not true that to a unique extent our Holyoke is entitled to be called "A City of Friends" to use Whitman's famous phrase. We are a brotherhood, working together toward the noblest ends of civilization, carrying out the co-operative purposes of God. £ It was not in
Holyoke that an unthinking rabble cried, "No God, No Master."
At the building of the cathedral of Chartres, "men and women harnessed themselves to carts and drew the great blocks of stone which were built into its splendid facade and its soaring pinnacles."
In like manner no record can do justice to the courage, to the foresight, to the self sacrifice, to the iron purpose of those masses of men and women that have made possible this civic pride which reigns in our hearts to-day.
"We are builders of this city All our joys and all our groans Help to rear its shining ramparts ; All our lives are building-stones."
"For our City we must labor, For its sake bear pain and grief ;
In it, find the end of living And the anchor of belief."
"And the work that we have builded, Oft with bleeding hands, and tears,
Oft in error, oft in anguish, Will not perish with our years."
"It will last, and shine transfigured In the final reign of right;
It will pass into the splendors Of the City of the Light."
HOLYOKE
RAOLD and NEW
FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY
1873 1923
Address By Rev. John F. Griffin
This day the city of Holyoke by solemn service commemorates her half century of existence as a municipality. Her citizens of every form of relig- ious faith gathered this morning in their respective houses of worship to offer Thanksgiving to God for fifty years of Fatherly care and Providential guid- ance. Yesterday, on this very spot was portrayed for us with musical cadence and artistic symbol the source of our fair city's material greatness. Tomor- row her streets shall reflect the stately dignity of her institutions, the material evidence of her growth, and the influence of her social grace. This brief hour has been set aside to give expression to the spirit of the community as the source of external growth, and particularly as it took on intense patri- otic fervor in times of national stress.
For the full expression of that spirit of patriot- ism, which has always spoken firm and true, there
sits on this platform at the cordial welcome and urgent request of your memorial committee one of the country's ablest military commanders, one of the most gallant leaders of the world war, one of the New England doughboy's very best friends, one who never sacrificed his own humanity in doing a necessarily inhuman work,-our own beloved Major General, Clarence R. Edwards.
To others has been committed the pleasing task of voicing, feebly at least, the sentiments of rever- ence and affection which we all bear towards the pioneers of this city who laid its cornerstone upon such imperishable foundations. And to emphasize as best they may the particular elements in that spirit and soul life which shines so brilliantly in our backward look of fifty years, to hold them aloft at this happy milestone in our progress that they
HOLYOKE EROLD and NEW FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
1873 1923
may become our trusted beacon lights for the future.
To do so it shall be necessary to look beneath the physical landscape of this peaceful valley, beneath the external evidences of wealth and power, to the invisible bonds of a common citizenship; to look be- neath our city's corporate being to the inner spirit, the soul, which animates that body ; to give expression to the motive power which dominates fifty years of our civic life.
Personally, the only requisite I can bring to the task is an ancestry familiar with this community since yonder stream was harnessed to do man's bidding; and a quarter century of residence within her bord- ers sharing in the intimate life, the joys and sorrows, the hopes and disappointments, the crosses and the crown, of her industrial, civic, and religious life. And I am glad to greet Holyoke here assembled, cradled as it were in the lap of a designing Provi- dence, to pay my humble tribute to the spirit and soul life of this community, which has always been strong and pure and wholesome before God and man.
The outstanding feature of the success of our community life as it is assessed today is its love for God and country. Its love for God not alone in the manifestation of its direct worship of Him as Creator and Judge, but in the love of His created Image in human kind. Christian ideals have always been the guiding principles of this community's inner life. 'To uphold these principles there has ever been a generous response. Though there may have been numerous individual lapses and failures in the attainment of those ideals, the ideals themselves have never been ob- scured. The individual may fall, but there is hope of his rescue while he holds to the true ideals of life. The community may lag in the attainment of its ideals, but it can rise, even upon the mistakes of the past, if its ideals are true and undimmed.
This community has reflected its love of God in the brotherly love of its citizens. There has been here no caste of citizenship, no pride of pomp and power. This community, be it said to its eternal glory, has been singularly free from social cleavage, radical intolerance, and religious bigotry. The man of wealth and power has been the neighbor and friend of the artisan and the day laborer. They have met on a plane of common citizenship, each respecting the
other's manhood, and both contributing to the up- building of our common life. This community has had its outstanding figures in business, in govern- ment, and social renown, but they have rarely segre- gated themselves from the common life and common interests of the community. And although we rightly honor today their memory and their place in the annals of our city life, we must not forget that the true, lasting and imperishable glory of this day is the memory of the thousands of citizens of common clay whose loyalty and devotion to true Christian princi- ples made their lives a noble sacrifice upon the altar of home, of country, and of God. The glory of this day lies in the message for the future drawn from the memory of the past. The pioneers of this com- munity rich and poor, native and adopted, employer and employee, early learned the lesson that was so long ago crystalized in the immortal lines of the poet.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.